Clinical Adverse Events in Elderly Hospitalized Patients in a Medical Ward-a prospective study

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Introduction: Studies to date describe between 3% to 50% of patients experiencing one or more clinical adverse event (CAE) during their hospital admission and many preventable. The aim of this prospective study was to determine the frequency of medical CAEs in a medical ward. Also the study aimed to compare data between patient age groups and determine the effect on length of hospital stay and mortality. Methods: This experimental study was a randomized, controlled clinical trial that was conducted in 2018. Two elderly day care centers in Yazd city ,in central Iran were selected and randomly assigned to control and intervention groups. Then, according to the inclusion criteria, eligible people were selected from the centers and enrolled in the study. Participants were 58 elderly women who were assigned to control (n: 29) and intervention (n: 29) groups. Yoga exercises were held for 2 months (three 1-h sessions a week) for intervention group. The Wechsler Memory Scale was completed for both groups before and after the intervention. Data were analyzed by SPSS using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: 62 episodes were studied, 14.8% of those admitted to hospital experienced a CAE. The most frequent adverse events included analytical alterations, anemia and blood loss, infection and altered state of consciousness. The most commonly implicated therapies were anticoagulants (23%) which lead to episodes of bleeding, anti-hypertensive and diuretics (17%) immunosuppressive therapy (16%) beta blockers (1%) & insulin (1%). Mean length of stay in hospital was 17 days in all groups, longer than the average length of stay of this medical ward which is 11 days. Mortality rate within one year of hospitalization was 30% in total, again significantly higher than the 10% mortality rate calculated for the same period on the ward. Conclusion: This study demonstrates that CAEs are still far too common, probably underestimated, cause serious harm to patients and strains healthcare services further.